I dropped the cups into a rubbish bag and stared out at the wind-rippled Thames, that uneasy feeling still pricking at me. Hugh’s doppelgänger plan was good, but before he and his boys in blue—although they’d be mostly witches, of course, so he and his girls in blue—could rush in, apprehend the baddies and hopefully rescue all the faelings, he needed evidence and warrants. With London’s fae as back-up I could put Hugh’s plan into action myself without the hassle and delay of all the judicial red tape.
But as I gave it serious thought, I came up with a fatal flaw: Between is out of this world, a place created by will and magic. And even knowing there was a patch of Between, and knowing where its entrance was, didn’t mean you could just waltz right on in, not unless its creator wanted you to. Hell, even if you had the magical key, and you got it to work, you’d only end up some place else (I know, I tried it at Tavish’s once, which is how I discovered what a swamp-dragon’s cave smells like; never again!). And cracking the entrance from the outside was a non-starter. But cracking the entrance open from the inside would be … well, difficult, but definitely doable in the right circumstances.
So I needed to be on the inside.
But not as a kidnapped victim. Another plan started to form in my mind …
Hugh rejoined me. ‘DI Crane is now officially missing,’ he announced with a troubled expression.
‘She’s disappeared?’ I said, stunned, then asked, ‘Do you mean she’s done a runner, or that you think someone’s made her disappear?’
‘We’re still working on that, Genny,’ he said.
Crap. I might not like the witch—okay, I was pretty sure I hated her—but I didn’t want her disappeared involuntarily. I had a sudden image of Helen Crane being the next one to be pulled out of the Thames, and what that would mean to Finn and their daughter. ‘Has anyone told Finn?’ I started to head towards the vans—
Hugh placed a restraining hand on my shoulder. ‘Constable Martin is with him just now, Genny. She’s taking a statement, to see whether he knows anything that can help. Let her do her job, and then you can speak to him.’ He held out an opened note in a sealed plastic evidence bag. ‘This was found at DI Crane’s home, Genny. It’s addressed to a G.N. Zakharinova, care of Spellcrackers.com. Finn doesn’t know who that is; what about you?’
The hair rose on the back of my neck. How the hell did Helen know my real name, when only the vamps knew it? Helen was a witch; they all avoided vamps like the plague, and the vamps reciprocated in kind. Plus Helen in particular had a phobia about them. Not to mention, why the hell was she sending me notes? She had to be desperate or devious.
After a few moments I held out my hand. ‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘I’m G. N. Zakharinova. It’s my birth name.’
Hugh nodded and handed me the letter. ‘You’d better read it, Genny. Then we’ll talk.’
I read it through the evidence bag.
To G. N. Zakharinova,
Your uncle Maxim contacted me regarding his Irish wolfhound. He was concerned about the safety of the dog’s offspring. Unfortunately this is no longer something I can guarantee. As I will not be able to speak to him through the usual channels, please ensure you contact him immediately with this information.
Helen Crane
Damn. So Helen had been guaranteeing—or rather, covering up for—‘the dog’s offspring’. And now she couldn’t, because she’d been found out, and had disappeared (willingly or not). But whether the note was a clue for the police, a cry for help or a warning she’d thought I’d take to Mad Max, I didn’t know. One thing I did know—
We had a suspect for the mastermind behind the faeling’s deaths. Mad Max’s son, whoever he was.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Hugh’s ‘talk’ about the note was in fact another round of statement-taking in one of the police vans, complete with a laptop-wielding WPC. We went over the memories the Morrígan had given me again, especially the one I’d had of the little blond-haired boy sliding down the slide in the playpark.
‘I’m pretty sure he’s Maxim’s son,’ I said, ‘and the “offspring” Helen Crane is talking about. But I don’t know who the boy is, or even how old he is. I meant to look up when kiddies’ slides were invented to see if that would give me a clue.’
‘I think I can help with that.’ The WPC looked up from her laptop. ‘From your description, Genny, my best guess is that the boy is in his mid-twenties to early thirties now.’ She smiled at me. ‘The slide wasn’t a clue—they’ve been around a lot longer—but the description of the lights was. I’m pretty sure they were halogens, which narrows it down.’
‘Mid-twenties to …?’ I frowned. ‘I bet Mad Max would want to keep his son near him, if he got him back.’ I flipped through the faces I knew at the Coffin Club and hit on one immediately. ‘Gareth Wilson,’ I exclaimed, ‘the human manager at the club—he’s about the right age, and he’s definitely a natural blond like Maxim.’
‘Check the records, Constable,’ Hugh said, ‘but I don’t want any contact with the club until I say so. I know it’s still five hours until sunset, but Maxim appears to be able to move around during the day in his dog shape.’ Hugh contemplated his large troll pen as if it had all the answers, then lifted serious grey eyes to me. ‘Maxim is unlikely to be very cooperative if it’s his son who is killing the faelings, Genny. I think it would be better if we approach the Oligarch privately first, to avoid any possibility of tipping Maxim and his son off and having both of them disappear on us.’ He gave me a quizzical look. ‘I know we haven’t really discussed your association with Malik al-Khan’—we definitely hadn’t, not when it was an association Hugh worried over like a mother hen—‘but do you have a way to contact him without me having to go through the normal channels?’
‘I’ve got something even better,’ I said, pulling a face as I told him about Malik being trapped in my bedroom. And Hugh was right. The logical way to get Mad Max to talk was to ask Malik as Oligarch to make Mad Max ‘cooperate’. But Malik’s own cooperation wasn’t necessarily a done deal.
For one, Mad Max didn’t owe Malik his Oath, and two: if there were no external humans involved, the vamps policed themselves. And if Mad Max (a vamp) and Helen (a witch) had something going on between them, it went against the centuries’ old détente between the two species. And then there was the third fact, that Malik had given his protection to London’s fae and faelings. Even if Mad Max’s son was a human, if Mad Max was part of what was going on, that would be a challenge to Malik’s own power-base as Head Fang. So in order to preempt any problems with either the Witches’ Council or the rest of the vamp families, Malik could justifiably rescind Mad Max’s Gift (a.k.a. rip his head off and burn him to ashes) and declare that an end to it.
Then there was the fact that Malik hadn’t exactly been forthcoming during our post-Coffin Club bedtime chat and had made it quite clear that he didn’t want me involved, so asking him to help wasn’t going to work. But finding some way of forcing him should … not only that, the situation gave me an idea of how to sort out my own problems with the beautiful, dictatorial vamp.
‘I think I can persuade Malik to cooperate,’ I told Hugh, ‘but I’ll need your help.’ Then I explained to him what I wanted, and about the flaw in his doppelgänger scheme, and how it could be fixed. And after a lot of concerned dust-puffing on Hugh’s part, we came up with a master plan: one that ensured Malik, as Oligarch, would assist the police; and meant that Hugh’s dopplegänger idea would work with or without the judicial red-tape; and as a bonus, also clubbed Malik’s ‘I Vampire, you Blood-Pet’ declaration on his arrogant buzz-cut head.